The American Dream Deferred
by TriplePirouette
Summary: Steve and Natasha talk about why she keeps trying to set him up on dates, and why he'll never go. Takes place before, after, and during the car scene with Steve and Natasha. Steggy with slides of Clintasha *formatting problem fixed 5/18/15*


Title: The American Dream Deferred

By: TriplePirouette/3Pirouette

Spoilers: Captain America The Winter Soldier

Disclaimer: They're not mine.

Word Count: 2782

Distribution: AO3. Anyone else please ask first :)

Summary: Steve and Natasha talk about why she keeps trying to set him up on dates, and why he'll never go. Takes place before, after, and during the car scene with Steve and Natasha. Steggy with slides of Clintasha

Feedback PLEASE at:triplepirouettephile Or just hit the little button there.

AN: I couldn't get over Natasha trying to get Steve to date, and his kind of awkward request to come in for coffee to Agent 13.

Thank you to Tumblr's Youcantgivemeorders for the beta!

Trigger warning for brief mention of suicidal thoughts.

* * *

The car ride was long and quiet. The roads were far better than he remembered from the first time, in an army jeep bouncing over a winter's worth of potholes with little to no suspension, but it was still not all that pleasant.

He liked Natasha, he did. But there was something dark about her, something that reminded him that she played by her own rules, something that kept him on edge around her. She might be on his side, but that didn't mean much when she'd already lied to him more than he'd like.

There was so much about this world that he didn't like, so many quirks of modern society that reminded him that he didn't fit in already, he didn't like feeling like he couldn't trust the few people he counted as friends.

So he was trying to trust her, attempting to put some faith in the idea that she had changed, and that the vestiges of her history, of the spy she'd been, were going to work to their advantage.

He needed a friend more than ever now, anyway, if he was going to figure any of this out.

It was like being in a foxhole during the war: you didn't get to pick who you were holed up with, hiding heads together to dodge bullets, but you sure as hell put all your faith in them that you'd both get out alive.

She kept asking questions, though, that he didn't want to answer. Personal questions. Scary questions.

Scary because if he thought about them, they took him into a deep, dark place where he would consider hopping on the next plane to the coldest place he could find and taking a long walk off a short pier just so he wouldn't have to deal with any of it.

Another 70 or so years asleep and it wouldn't all be just so close he could touch it, it wouldn't all be just out of reach.

It didn't mean he would do it, it just meant he thought about it.

And once again, she couldn't help but keep talking. "Where did Captain America learn how to steal a car?"

* * *

 _There's a chance you might be in the wrong business, Rogers._ Her words bothered him, sat wrong with him. The whole ride through the Pine Barrens he kept thinking through that conversation over and over, his gut churning. "Why do you care so much?" Steve bit out, looking at her sharply before turning back to the road.

"About what?" She asked, putting her feet back up on the dash in a near challenge.

He shook his head and looked around as he changed lanes. "About me getting a date. About if I've kissed anyone since 1945."

She looked in her lap, a curtain of red obscuring her face from his peripheral vision for long seconds before she replied. "Our job sucks." She sighed. "It's not 9 to 5. There's no pension. There are no days off…" Natasha sighed. "Sometimes I think about what it would be like to just be a normal person. When I'm undercover I can pretend that I'm just a secretary, or I'm just a liaison for a few hours and I wonder what it would be like to settle down in a little house with a little fence…" She trailed off, her hands fidgeting in her lap.

"You'd hate that," Steve whispered, a small smile picking up the corner of his mouth.

She laughed and sat back. "I know. But I also know that I'm lonely. This job is lonely. This life is lonely. Then I pick up the phone and call Clint and it's all just a little less so."

Steve raised his eyebrows at her. "You and Clint?"

She shook her head and looked out the window. "Not like that. Not really." Natasha pulled her foot off the dash and tucked it under her, looking a little sheepish. "It's more about not being alone, you know? I love him, but I don't- we'll never- we'll never have that life. But it's nice to pretend."

"So you want me to pretend?" He asked just a little too sharply, eyes glued to the road.

She shook her head and laughed, full out laughed at him. "You're freakin' Captain America. If anyone one of us has even the most remote chance of getting a picket fence and two point five kids, of getting that American Dream… it's you."

He took a deep breath, forcing himself to keep from reacting too harshly. They'd worked together for more time than he could count and twice now she'd proven she knew more about the propaganda around him than the person he was. He grunted, neither assent nor disagreement, as the darkness washed over him. It was the feeling he'd had after discussing trust with Fury. It was the desire to be surrounded by the Commandos, the need for a team that he trusted and that trusted him. It was the dark hole in the pit of his stomach knowing that only one person left on this earth knew him before they'd turned him into some science experiment that they'd exploited. It left him simmering, and unwilling to say another word on the subject.

Perceptive as always, Natasha turned away to stare out the window, saying nothing and betraying even less emotion than she had before. After a few miles, the silence hurt more than the words bubbling up in his chest, so he let them out. "You want to know the truth?"

"Only if you want to tell it." She barely moved, still staring at the trees as they passed by.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out the compass that was always on him. He flipped it open and passed it over to her. "Peggy Carter. Agent Peggy Carter."

"She's pretty." Natasha said, holding the compass like it was a precious stone. At least, Steve thought, she had enough respect for that.

"She's more than pretty. She's brilliant, strong, funny…" Steve smiled despite himself. "I met her before the serum, when I was still a ninety pound asthmatic that couldn't do a pushup no matter how hard I tried. She knew me then, she knew me when I became what I am. She trusted me, she believed in me."

Natasha smiled, carefully closing the small metal compass and handing it back to him. "It's why you keep her in there, isn't it?"

"We were going to have a proper date, when it was all over." His eyes grew misty thinking about it, but he forged on, telling her what he'd never said aloud to anyone else, ever. "We talked about it all the time. Stole what little time together we could on base, but…" He cleared his throat, trying to force back the emotion that always slipped to the surface when he thought about Peggy, "we were going to go dancing."

"That's beautiful," Natasha whispered. He could feel her eyes on him, but he didn't look at her.

It hurt to think that he was saying it out loud, but at the same time it felt better than ever to finally share it. In 1945 it would have been borderline improper for them to carryon based on their ranks, and when he woke up it just didn't seem to matter to anyone else what he'd lost. "She was my best girl, Natasha. My white picket fence, two kids, and a dog." He thrummed his hands on the wheel for a second. "I mean, I doubt we ever would have actually had it- she was career military, and after the serum, I don't think I could ever just walk away, but…" His voice dropped low and maudlin as he finished his thought. "After the war, we had plans."

Her whisper was sad and small. "I don't think I've ever had plans."

"I did," he continued. "I had a date, and I missed it. I was late by seventy years."

"You can't live in the past." Natasha's voice was strong and dark as she turned to look at him. "We all have pasts, not so pretty ones that have made us who we are. You can't just sit there and wait for it to all be over."

"She still is my best girl," he replied sharply, willing her to finally understand what he'd been desperate to say to anyone for the past few years. "Peggy lives just outside of Alexandria. Most days she remembers me, some days she doesn't even remember who she is, but on the good days…" He looks sharply at her before turning back to the road; regret taking over for the frustration. "On the good days she's the only person who remembers where I came from, who knew me before, who really… who really understands me."

"I'm sorry," her voice is quiet but strong, her eyes peaking around the curtain of her hair. "I didn't know."

"No one does." He made it clear that it was a secret, and he hoped more than anything this was the one time her ability to keep quiet would do him some good. He shook his head. "I asked the nurse across the hall to have coffee with me, and she said no."

"Agent thirteen," Natasha shrugged, knowing he wasn't happy about it. "She's nice."

"Doesn't matter," He said, a calm taking over him. "It felt wrong. The whole time the words were coming out of my mouth I was thinking of Peggy." The yellow and white lines passed beneath them for long seconds and he resisted the urge to press harder on the gas pedal. "I was gonna marry her, Natasha. We talked about it all the time." He heard her exaggerated breath, the catch that meant he caught her off guard. "But I died. To her I died and she moved on, she had a life without me, which is what I would have wanted, what I did want. I'm glad she did. But now-"

"But now?" Natasha prompted, caught up in his story.

He shook his head as he followed the curve of the road with the wheel. "Now I'm back and she's still the most amazing woman I've ever met. She can read me like a book in no time flat, even on her worst days." He gripped the steering wheel tightly. "It was supposed to be until death do we part- and now we're both alive and I'm here and I still love her. How could I even possibly consider…" he couldn't finish the sentence, it stirred up too much emotion that he didn't want to risk revealing.

"You're allowed to love her, Steve," Natasha reminded him, her hand sitting on his arm for a brief moment.

He smiled, just a little half smile. "I don't think I have any choice in that."

"But you're allowed to have your own life, too." Her voice was wistful. "You deserve a chance to not be lonely."

"I wish things were different," he mused, "but I'm not lonely."

"Good," she replied softly. Watching him closely, she continued to stare for a few long minutes before she spoke again, making him very nearly crawl in his skin. "I'm still going to tease you about girls." He looked askance at her, but she threw her hands up. "If I didn't people would know something's up."

Steve shrugged. "Fair enough."

"You can talk to me about her, you know," Natasha offered, curling up in the passenger seat a little smaller. "If you want."

"Thanks," he said sincerely, his heart pounding a little harder in his chest. He didn't think he'd ever bring Peggy up to anyone again, not with the way it was starting to make him feel broken and alone, but the offer was appreciated nonetheless.

"You might want to talk to Tony." Her voice surprised him after a few quiet moments as he looked for the next exit.

He didn't look at her, didn't even want to acknowledge it. "Why's that?"

She shrugged, he could see it from the corner of his eye. "I think he has a picture of her in his house. I worked with him for a while before New York, and I remember going into one of his studies- there was a picture of her and a man that I think was Tony's father. It might…" She trailed off and shrugged. "I don't know. You might just want to talk to him, is all."

"I'll… I'll think about it." He would, at the least, think about it. He probably would never say a word to Tony, but he would think about it.

"I think that's our exit," Natasha changed the subject deftly, pointing to the green sign as they slipped under it, following up with the directions from her phone's guidance system. He nodded and slipped over a lane, getting ready to take the exit. "She must be some cougar to keep you besotted like a schoolboy all this time later," Natasha muttered to herself.

He looked at her as he turned, eyebrows furrowed. "Like the animal?"

Natasha smiled. "You should definitely ask Tony about that." She looked back down at her phone then pointed again, hiding her mischievous grin. "Make this left."

* * *

It brought back too many memories to be at Fort Lehigh. Marches and flags and a beautiful woman who smiled at him even though he could barely stand with his pack on his back. It reminded him about a doctor who believed in him, and the colonel who came to trust his judgment. He could barely breathe at all the ghosts here, too many to count.

It was easier, then, to rely on his instinct, to find the ammunitions bunker that didn't belong, to descend into the room that felt safe and familiar even though it had been built years and years after he ever would have been in it.

"There's Stark's father." And there she was, Agent Peggy Carter, staring at him from the wall. It felt like a sign, like divine intervention. Maybe it was to say he was on the right path, maybe it was to tell him that he did the right thing by telling Natasha, but there she was.

His heart skipped a beat, just like it did every time he looked at her picture and thought 'What if…'

"Howard," he added, his eyes raking back to his once-friend. Another loss he tried not to think about.

"Whose the girl?" Natasha bated him knowing full well who she was, watching as he looked back at the portrait. He turned away. He'd said too much today. With Peggy staring at him, her eyes bright with possibilities and her lips shining with that little smile that he saw in his dreams, he couldn't let any more of the little he had left of her go.

He felt Natasha follow him after a moment. He had his secrets, too, and she'd just have to deal with the fact the he wasn't going to tell her everything. He stared at the bookcases, knowing something was wrong. He could feel… wind. There shouldn't have been a breeze in here; he remembered stuffy, dark bunkers with air that never moved unless… His eye caught the cobweb and he reached out. "If you're already working in a secret office," Steve pulled the wall aside, trying to refocus his mind, "why do you need to hide the elevator?"

A few quiet seconds with a gadget that Natasha pulled out of nowhere and they were in. He was surprised the elevator still worked, but then again Howard and Peggy had always surprised him. It wasn't until the doors closed that she spoke again.

"I don't know much about Peggy Carter, but I met her once. She…she gave me a second chance." Natasha looked down at her hands. "She helped found SHIELD. I knew her picture." Natasha turned her head to look at him. "I was just giving you a hard time."

He nodded, looking over at her. "I wouldn't mind, except… this place."

"A lot of ghosts, huh?" She asked, looking at the elevator's panel as it flashed half numbers in the partially working display.

When he closed his eyes he could almost feel Erskine's presence, and wondered if there really was such a thing as a ghost. "Too many."

The car began to slow. She put her hand on his shoulder for just one second, and then pulled it back gently. "Let's get to work then, yeah?"

Steve nodded just as the elevator stopped and the doors opened, the whistling wind of an out of date air filtration system putting him on edge.


End file.
